Aside from having dance music play everywhere, one of the largest differences that I have found with the English culture is that people seem to keep to themselves a lot. In a lot of smaller towns people will greet each other on the street and generally look forward to meeting new people. On the flip side, in the big cities people keep their heads down and generally mind their own business.
As I mentioned above, dance music (mostly house) is everywhere here. Even today I was having lunch in an amazing Chinese resteraunt and heard the following track:
This is not exactly your typical Chinese restaurant music.
I was pondering why dance music took off so fast and furious over here in the 80s and it wasn’t really making sense. There is so much heritage and culture in England but that doesn’t explain it. People have their own musical tastes in all areas of the world, so that doesn’t explain it.
It didn’t click for me until I was walking down the street in London and someone bumped into me and didn’t say a word. One word jumped out at me “ecstasy”. With such a lack of friendliness and togetherness in day to day street life in the super-cities like London, its no wonder why the feeling of oneness that the combination of dance music and drugs like ecstasy caught on so quickly and took the highly-populated nation by storm.
You will see it in the clubs here in London; kids freaking out with each other, hugging, smiling, laughing and letting all of the stresses and the self mindedness go. People party together when dance music is present and the feelings that it brings up can defiantly be addictive, especially when you are raised in a culture where the people keep a ‘stiff upper lip‘ and their heads down in the big city.
This past weekend I played another gig at Ginger 62, Vancouver’s hottest club for House Music. It was the most fun I have had DJing in some time and I thought I would share a few pictures and a bunch of the tracks that I played to share the experience.
I still can’t believe that I get paid to drink for free, play awesome tracks from Play It Tonight and have girls come up to meet me while I play. The girls were loving the tracks from our site.
Here are some the tracks I played in the club this night that had the girls shakin’ it and the guys groovin’:
For the first time, Play It Tonight will be heading to Amsterdam to check out the Amsterdam Dance Event(ADE). The event takes place in the downtown core of Amsterdam from October 18th until the 20th.
The ADE has taken the place of the Winter Music Conference (WMC) Miami as the ‘go to’ dance music event for music industry business, djs, producers and for great music. Rumor has it that the ADE is a great mix of business and fun which is what the WMC used to be all about 5 years ago. Now South Beach is flooded with party kids from all around North America that go down to get fucked up and party. Thousands are there just because it is the place to be and because they have money and they are not there for the actual conference or for the business. It is the wrong crowd heading down south and less and less business gets done each year.
Navigating the streets, alleys, and water ways of Amsterdam can apparently be a nightmare. Aside from this we have not heard one negative thing about the event or the city itself.
The conference features many different business networking events and conferences along with performances at night from some of the biggest and best artists in the world including:
If anyone would like to meet the Play It Tonight staff at the ADE please feel free to click here and email us with your contact info and we will set up a meeting with you over a pint or some lunch.
A lot of you may be confused by the title of this post. How does a reference to a toolbox fit into the realm of a dance music MP3 download store?
All around the world people lack motivation and inspiration. There are few things in the world that inspire more than music. As Dan said in his post “Right Time Right Place“, when that song comes on at the right place and at the right time, few things can be more moving.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that music (especially Dance music) can be used as a tool to get yourself motivated for anything. Music evokes emotions and when you can put emotion behind a task or a goal, it gives you that much more power to reach for that goal or to get things done.
For example, as lame as it sounds, when I am setting goals or making important decisions I will play music that will make me feel like I am important. Some examples are:
The best thing about using music as a source of motivation is that it is always available. Any time you want, 24-7, you can throw on your Ipod or your home speakers and play that beautiful song that gives you chills.
To summarize, the next time you are feeling down or need some motivation and inspiration, (legally) download a sick MP3 of a song that makes you FEEL something, fire it up on your system and let the beautiful melodies and baselines inspire.
This past weekend I celebrated my birthday. Over four different nights we partied with four different groups of close friends.
One night I was lucky enough to play to a packed club called The Caprice with Dan W, the other owner of Play It Tonight. This was a university crowd that aren’t used to house music and people were losing their minds! They had never heard good ‘techno music’ as they called it and wanted to know where they could find more dance music online.
(Sean Gallagher [CEO] & Brent Sutherland [CFO] helping put up the banners)
(Sean [CEO of Play It Tonight] with Olivia)
(Jerin [promoter], Dan [President of Play It Tonight], Sean [CEO] & Brent Sutherland [CFO])
Later on the weekend I played at one of Vancouver’s biggest clubs; the Red Room. There was one moment where I played one of my favorite tracks, Strategy - Joshua Heathon Salted, and there I was looking out at a smiling / cheering sea of people which included my best friends, my brother and countless beautiful women. I looked behind me and three cute girls were dancing around and hanging in the DJ booth with me. At this moment my friend Anna ran up to the booth with tears in her eyes telling me that this was her favorite song and that she hadn’t heard it in a club before. She had a tough day and hearing this song in the club brought up all of the emotions that she had been storing away from her tough day.
(Sean Gallagher [CEO of Play It Tonight] with girlfriends Katy, Coco & Sammy @ Red Room)
The final night of my birthday weekend was a little more relaxed. A friend and I were hosting a dress to impress cocktail party for our close friends. For the occasion I made some CDs from Play It Tonight and they were played throughout the night. At around 11:30 the party was at its peak. All of my close friends were mingling and having a blast. Everyone was smiling and just as I was looking around enjoying the moment my ears clued into the fact that another one of my favorite tracks Les Djinns (Trentmoller Mix) - Djuma Soundsystemon Get Physical Music was being played through the house system. The song fit and highlighted the moment perfectly and it just added to the magic of the evening.
(Sean Gallagher’s Birthday Cocktail party - Sean Gallager [CEO] and Brent Sutherland [CFO] can be seen in the top middle of the picture)
These three amazing experiences reminded me of how lucky I am to be working with music on a daily basis. Sometimes when you deal with music all day you take it for granted; you forget the power that it holds. Dance music has the power to blow people’s minds, it has the power to evoke such emotions that it can bring someone to tears and it can bring any moment to the next level; for this I am thankful.
Every week I’m constantly impressed by the caliber of music being produced. On top of that, every week I find another 10+ artists that I’ve never heard of before that are creating freakin’ incredible tracks!
One of the greatest aspects of technology is the fact of how inexpensive it has become for a person to be able to produce their own music. 15 years ago you had to be signed to a big label who paid for your studio time, or have fat pockets of your own, just to be able to write a track. Nowadays, you can buy a laptop for under a thousand bucks and it comes with production software. You’re off to the races. Creative minds now have an outlet. Imagine all the musical geniuses overtime that had beautiful music in their head, and nowhere to get it out, just because they weren’t wealthy. Thankfully technology has cured this.
This ample access to ‘studio time’ has its drawbacks as well.
The industry is now flooded with music. Even within one sub-genre, there can be upwards of 500+ new tracks every week. The role of the DJ has become that of professional sifter. It takes hours and hours of preview listening to filter down to the tracks you like.
There are a few ways around this. For one, your favorite labels are only going to release music they feel is worthy. Checking charts of the DJ’s you like will also guide you in the right direction. Reading the recommended releases in our Newsletter and Blog will surely help too. Taking the time to read music forums about your preferred genres will have a global overview of what’s hot. We all have a formula that works for us. And at the end of it all, it’s a pretty good life listening to music all day long in search of your new favorite floor fillers.
This week we haven’t had as much upfront content as we usually do because we spent the week upgrading our server system. This means that we couldn’t upload new content all week! This just means that next week is going to be jam packed with thousands of the best dance music releases!
Make sure that you check back on the blog every Thursday so that you can find the hidden gems that other DJs aren’t. Also feel free to leave us some comments to let us know what you think about our recommendations and what you would like to see in future recommendation posts.
I have heard about Kid Beyond many times before. I had no idea that he used to create his music is Ableton Live, a microphone and a foot pedal. This guy produces house, trance, drum and bass, breaks loops, melodies and percussion just by using his voice.
Check out this video that I found on youtube where Kid Beyond breaks down how he does his live performances. AMAZING!
For traditional retail stores around the world, prepaid cards are generating billions. All of the big players in the music industry are now starting to offer pre-paid download cards to increase gift giving and to increase exposure to new customers.
Itunes has reported that in December and January of this year they sold 8 times the amount of songs that they did the previous Christmas. Anyone looking at this statistic can only draw one conclusion behind the sudden increase in sales: prepaid gift cards for the Christmas season.
These cards can be increasingly profitable for companies because users usually do not use the full value allotted to the card as well as being an amazing promotional tool.
Play It Tonight will probably be making better use of pre-paid cards just as the big names in the industry already have. But is this really where the industry is heading? Are these cards really going to save the music industry? This may be appliccable for the mom that doesn’t know what to buy her son for Christmas and Itunes but are the buying habits of DJs really conducive for this type of a business model?
